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The girl behind the blog...

Welcome to my blog! I hope you enjoy reading about my busy life with my husband of 30 years and our four sons and daughter-in-law. We are now empty nesters and my blog is helping me through the journey. I love the Lord and I love my family. I also love to decorate and go to thrift stores!

Sunday, June 13, 2010

How many of you like to use these green abrasive scouring pads to wash your pans and dishes?

I LOVE them!!! I feel like they do the best job for cleaning my pots and pans and also for scrubbing my sink. After a couple of months though they start wearing out and look like the one above. This one has definitely seen better days! Haha! So it's time to demote this one and get a new one out and I decided that I would write a post about it.The first thing I do is get my scissors out and snip off the corner of the old one. While I love to use these pads in the kitchen, they also work excellent for outside cleaning with things like scrubbing shoes, boots, garden tools, garage tools, the outdoor grill, etc. So when I trade out my old kitchen scouring pad for a new one, I demote these old ones to the garage.But, to make sure that we don't mix up the "clean" inside ones with the "dirty" outside ones, I had the idea to cut one of the corners off so the whole family would recognize this.

There have been times when my husband has scrubbed a machine part in our kitchen sink and used one of these, but accidentally left it in the sink. If I see it laying there and notice the cut corner, I know not to use it to scrub a dish that I'm going to be eating off of! This works great!

I did learn something valuable though! I bought this Scrub Buddies brand at the Dollar Tree for only a buck thinking that I got the best deal in the world because I thought all scouring pads were the same.......but they are not! I quickly realized that the cheap scrubbers were not a good deal! They only lasted about a week or two before they looked like this. Even my boys, who trade off doing dishes every night, complained that the new scouring pads were not very strong, didn't work as well and kind of fell apart in their hands while they were doing the dishes.

So I went to Walmart and bought the good ones, Scotch-Brite brand scouring pads. I paid $2.42 for three of them compared to $1.00 for the cheap ones.They extra $1.42 is well worth it! You can just feel a difference in the quality of them with their tough fibers and abrasives.

They last much longer too! Just look at this comparison above, the Scotch-Brite scrubber is on the left after about two months of use and the Scrub Buddies is on the right after about only two weeks of use. The cheap brand peeled up and were worthless in a matter of days compared to the life expectancy of several weeks with the Scotch-Brite brand.

They come in a rather large size of 3x5 inches, which for me is a little too big and not very easy to handle.

So as soon as I buy them, I cut them in half.

That's much better! This is a much more easier size for me to handle and it also doubles the amount that I have!

So while we are discussing my scouring pads, I will show you another problem I had and how I fixed it. I am a neat nick and I like to hide every day items like my soaps and scrubbers, so after using the pads, I threw them in an old drinking glass I had under the sink.So this seems like a good solution, but....I noticed that the water would drain from the pad and sit at the bottom of the glass and our pads were always wet. It was so gross when I would grab the pad to use and it dripped all over everything! Also, that water would become stagnate and start stinking and it was disturbing to think of the microscopic things that were probably growing in the water and thus transferring to the pads thus transferring to my pots and pans that we were eating from! NOT GOOD!I started to think about it and thought that a strainer of some sort is what I need, so I went to Goodwill and found this cute little strainer.

I'm not sure what it originally is for, but it's perfect for this!

Now, lets just hope it fits into my glass!Yea!!! It's a perfect fit!And my scrubber still fits inside too!So now the water drains out and collects at the bottom of the jar allowing the pad to fully dry and not get stinky! I still have to remember to dump the water every so often and clean the glass.Hey that works perfect!Now excuse me for a minute while I finish cleaning up my kitchen and scrub my sink. There is something so satisfying to me when I scrub my sink. It is always the last job I do when I'm cleaning the kitchen and it just feels so good to know my kitchen is clean!

So, that's all for today! Another exciting story from Rose of Sharon Garden and our thrilling life! Haha! I hope my personality was not too abrasive for you in this post! :0)

"Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10:22

7 comments:

I have never used these before. How are they on coated pans? Do they scratch them? I love how you found way to keep the pads drained and not sitting in water. I'm going to have to check out our goodwill store here in town. Thanks for sharing this great tip.

Good morning Judy! They will probably scratch coated pans, but they are great on stainless steel and pyrex dishes. I use them on my sink because our sink was scratched when we got it so it didn't bother me. I have not noticed that they have left more scratches on the sink.

What a timely post...I had bought the 'cheaper' brand of the kitchen sponges that have the rougher scrubbie on the back. I figured the same as you..."they must be just as good, right?" WRONG! The sponge part was foam...and after just one use, I could tell it wasn't going to hold up to a good scrubbing of anything. SO, this week, I put the GOOD ones on the grocery list and am happy again! I guess sometimes you DO get what you DON'T pay for...LOL!

Dear Lynn, you sound like you learned a good lesson just like I did! Have a wonderful day! <3

Dear Randi Jo,

We serve such an awesome and amazing God! Thank you for stopping by my blog! I am so happy that it encourages you. I am so very thankful for my amazing kids and I got to say that I was in prayer all the time over them in every area imaginable. We made our home really fun for them, but we had rules and they had responsibilities. We disciplined with love. I was always reading Christian books on parenting and talking with other women trying to seek Godly advise. God was faithful and answered my prayers. You have such a blessed little family. Keep seeking God and ask for His wisdom and direction in your life and He will give it!

Hugs, Sharon

P.S. You asked about comet and I love to use it on my sink. It removes all the scratch marks and stains and makes it shine!